Worthy Queen of Greatness
by whydoyouneedtoknow
Summary: AU, diverges early. What if Elsa and Anna's parents had understood what the trolls really meant about Elsa's power?
1. The Queen's Speech

(A/N: I do not own the characters from _Frozen _and my only recompense from this story will be reader reviews. If anyone wants to sue me for a share of those, go for it.

The title of this story comes from a translation of one of the songs in _Frozen_, and the main idea of it is: What if Elsa and Anna's parents (whose names I have invented, as they don't have any in the movie) hadn't made the mistakes they did in raising their daughters? Which, do _not_ get me started on Disney parents. I'll just let my writing speak for itself. Please, enjoy!)

* * *

Queen Brigitta of Arendelle laid her younger daughter gently in her bed, then turned to her older child. Elsa stood very still several steps back from the bedside, her eyes fixed on the narrow white streak in Anna's red-gold hair, as they had been intermittently throughout this most hectic of days.

"What is it, my love?" she asked.

"Papa's told the guards to close the gates." Elsa twisted one small, slim hand inside the other. "To keep the people away from us. Away from _me_. Because I'm dangerous."

Brigitta sat down on the edge of Anna's bed and folded her hands in her lap. "No, Elsa," she said calmly, holding her daughter's ice-blue eyes with her own brown ones. "Because you _can be_ dangerous."

"That's the same thing—" Elsa began, her voice shrill with tension.

"It is _not_." Brigitta glanced towards the door by which her husband had left Anna's bedroom. "Tell me this. Is your father dangerous?"

"Papa?" Elsa scoffed. "No!"

"Are you sure?" Brigitta kept her smile internal, lest Elsa think she was being mocked. "You have seen him practice striking targets with his sharp sword, and shooting arrows from his powerful bow. You have seen him consulting with the general of his army, and with the admiral of his warships. If Arendelle were threatened, or any of us, do you not think he would become in that moment a very dangerous man indeed?"

Reluctantly, Elsa nodded. "But that's _different!_" she burst out, her eyes returning to Anna, curled on her side in the bed. "I hurt _Anna_, and she wasn't threatening anyone, she _couldn't_ threaten anyone—"

"You had," Brigitta interrupted again, still in her calmest tones, "an accident, which is no one's fault. It was wrong of you to be careless with your powers, yes, but tell me this, Elsa. Did you know, before today, that your powers could hurt someone?"

"No." Elsa sniffled once. "I thought…I thought they were just…"

"Just fun," Brigitta finished for her daughter, and held out a handkerchief as the sniffling recurred. "The same fun the eldest troll was careful to leave within your sister's mind, although he had to take away the memories of your magic to be certain that her thoughts would be safe from freezing."

Elsa nodded miserably, and scrubbed at her eyes with the kerchief. "Why did I have to be different, Mama?" she whispered, even as delicate ice crystals formed along the surface of the fine linen in her hand. "Why did I have to be dangerous?"

As with her smile, Brigitta muffled her sigh. "Have I ever told you, Elsa," she said, "about the day I was practicing my archery with my kitten Snowball chasing birds nearby?"

"No." Elsa shook her head, her narrowed eyes making it clear that she saw no connection between a story about her mother's childhood and the problem facing her now.

"I was watching Snowball at her play, rather than keeping my eyes on my target, and so the arrow I loosed from my bow most naturally drifted towards the line of my sight." Brigitta shook her head at her daughter's gasp of horror. "No, I did not shoot my little Snowball. But I frightened her, Elsa, because the arrow struck so close to her, and she ran away from me. Before I could catch her, she had run all the way out of my father's palace." The lump in her throat, the tears in her eyes, came without summoning, and she had to stop and breathe deeply for a moment before she could finish the tale. "I never saw her again."

"Oh, Mama!" Elsa's eyes widened in understanding and shared pain, and she sprang forward and caught her mother into a fierce hug. "Mama, I'm so sorry!"

"Thank you, love," Brigitta murmured, letting the tears of that long-ago loss fall into her daughter's pale braids, then kissing the top of her head and releasing her to hold her at arm's length. "Now, Elsa, look," she said, gesturing up and down her body. "What do you see?"

"I see…you, Mama." Elsa frowned, with a trace of the uncertainty of even the most intelligent child over whether or not she were being teased by an adult. "Why?"

"Am I frozen anywhere?" Brigitta extended her hands for inspection, touched the shoulder of her dress where Elsa's face had lain, brushed a finger across her lips, which had rested in the white-blonde hair. "Did your powers hurt me in the slightest?"

"No." The word escaped Elsa's lips on the barest puff of breath. "But—but the troll took Anna's memories away—"

"Only until it is safe for her to know again," said Brigitta firmly. "And that will be as soon as you, my love, have learned one important lesson which it seems you come by honestly." She held out her hand with a rueful smile, and Elsa, after an instant's hesitation, laid her own in it. "How to _pay attention_."

"Mama!" Elsa protested, giggling. The sound warmed Brigitta's heart, as one she had been unsure if she would ever hear again. Then her daughter sobered, looking worried. "But what will Papa say?"

"Papa will say," said King Gunther of Arendelle from the doorway of Anna's bedroom, making Queen and Princess both look around in surprise, "that he is very proud of his strong and talented daughter Elsa, who will be a Queen to be reckoned with someday. And that he is very grateful to his wise and clever lady wife," he added to Brigitta, "for understanding what he did not."

"Yes, I have no doubt how you would have handled things if I had not spoken." Brigitta shook her head. "You were already beginning badly. Closing the gates, Gunther? Walling out the world, shutting us inside, when the eldest troll told us specifically that Elsa must not be controlled by her fear? What better way to _force_ that to happen?"

"So I see now. And so I should have seen from the beginning." Gunther sat down on the opposite side of the bed from his wife, and stroked Anna's hair once before holding out his hand to Elsa. "We will leave the gates closed until, as your mother says, you have learned how to pay attention when you use your powers," he told her as she came to him. "But I think that will not take you very long. And as part of your practice, Elsa, you will spend a part of every day with Anna, and you will remember that she does _not _remember what you can do. So, when you play with her, you must be only Princess Elsa, and not my little Snow Queen." He lifted Elsa's braid between two fingers and brushed the tip of her nose with it, making her smile. "Can you do that?"

"Yes, Papa." Elsa looked longingly at her sister. "But when can I tell her again?"

"On the day we open up the gates," said Brigitta before Gunther could respond. "And that will be, Elsa, when you have passed a test, the same sort of test that pages must pass before they can be squires. Three parts, do you think, love?" she asked her husband. "A keen eye, a clever mind, and a willing heart?"

"Please, my dear, continue." Gunther sat back, as Elsa perched herself on the bottom corner of Anna's bed to listen. "What do you have in mind?"

"First, glasses of water." Brigitta shaped them with her hands. "Ten of them, hidden throughout a room. You must seek them out and freeze the water in them, Elsa, and _only_ that water, without harming what lies around it—yes, you can," she added at a protesting murmur from her daughter. "Or haven't you been making yourself and your sister a snowy playground in our good ballroom every other day for the last year and a half, and never causing a bit of damage to the floors?"

Elsa gasped. "You knew?"

Brigitta only smiled, and went on. "Second, you will study with your father the times in the past when Arendelle has been in danger, and what the kings and queens of those times did to keep our kingdom safe. And then you will discuss with him what _you_ might do, when you are a woman grown and the Queen of Arendelle, with your powers to act as your sword and your bow." She steepled her fingers together. "After all, what are the two best ways to enter our kingdom? By the fjord, or through the mountain passes. And what can happen to fjords, and to mountain passes, especially in winter?"

With a grin, Elsa held out her hand, over which a fine dust of snow trickled down onto a sheet of ice.

"Precisely." Brigitta gestured for her daughter to end the use of her power, and traded a small, smug smile with Gunther when Elsa did so almost absently. "And third, Elsa, you will simply live. You will come and go through the palace. You will learn lessons with your father and with me, and you will play games with your sister, and you will exercise your powers when you are alone, learning both to call them up and to send them away. And when you have mastered all of that—which, make no mistake, you will—then we will open up the gates. And _then_ you may show Anna what you can do once again."

"Yes, Mama." Elsa sighed a little. "I still wish she'd never had to forget to begin with."

"I know, little one." Brigitta reached out and took her daughter's hand across the expanse of bed. "But we must think of the future now, not the past. And the future may yet be a beautiful one." She looked across at her husband. "I like the way you put it, love. Elsa of Arendelle, the Snow Queen."

Judging by the smile on Elsa's face, Brigitta thought, her daughter liked the title very well herself.

* * *

(A/N: So, there's our beginning. How will things continue to unfold? Will Hans, and Kristoff and Sven, come into this version of the story at all? Well now, you just have to read and find out, don't you?

Thanks, as always, for reading, and if you've enjoyed this beginning, please, stay with me…my beginnings have a habit of turning into quite lengthy continuations, which is true both of my fan writing and my originals. See my bio page for more information!)


	2. Do You Want to Build a Snowman?

(A/N: I disclaim the one or two lyrics/lines which are borrowed from _Frozen_ directly, instead of being adapted for this fic. I think you'll know them when you read them.

BYOM (Bring Your Own Music) and please enjoy!)

* * *

Elsa jumped as a knock sounded on her door, sending the shower of magic she'd been aiming at one of her glasses of water in a completely different direction from the one she'd intended. _What in the world— _

"Elsa?" called Anna's voice plaintively from the hallway. "Do you want to build a snowman? Come on, let's go and play!"

Inside the room, Elsa groaned under her breath, examining the bit of wall her powers had buckled with cold and ice. "Oh, Anna, please, I almost had it then!" she hissed, too softly for her sister to hear. "How can I practice when you're always in the way?"

"I know we both have lessons," Anna went on, her piping tones hopeful, "but I'm done with mine, and I want to play with you! Do you want to build a snowman?" Her voice took on a trace of wistfulness. "It doesn't _have _to be a snowman…"

About to order Anna to go away, Elsa bit her tongue, remembering the third test her mother had set for her. "Yes, I do," she called back instead, and opened the door just a fraction to smile down at Anna's eager face. "Go get your snow things on, all right?"

* * *

"So how was your time outside with Anna?" Gunther asked his older child, smiling at her rosy cheeks and rumpled hair. "Did your powers trouble you at all?"

"A little bit, but I remembered what you and Mama said. Sister first, Snow Queen second. And we did have fun." Elsa climbed eagerly into the chair her father had placed beside his desk, peering at the map he had laid ready for their lesson. "Am I learning about geography today?"

"A queen must know as much as she can about her neighbors and trading partners, to stay on good terms with them and avoid insulting them by accident." Gunther laid a finger on a brightly colored patch of land south of Arendelle. "For instance, this particular city-state is _not_ pronounced the way you might think it is…"

* * *

Rubbing her hands together, Elsa summoned up her magic, a much easier task than it had been almost eighteen months before, when she'd had her accident with Anna. Her powers, as the eldest troll had warned her, were only growing stronger as she got older.

_But I'm growing stronger too, and smarter, with everything I'm learning from Papa and Mama, and with all the practice I'm doing. _

_And right now, I need to do a little more of it._

"All right, it's time to build a snowman," she murmured to herself, turning rapidly to locate the glasses her mother had hidden throughout her room. "Freeze all the water I can find—eek!" She dodged as one of her ice blasts hit the mirror instead and ricocheted directly back at her. "The trouble is, it's very easy to make a mistake when you have so much on your mind…"

With a sigh, she looked over at Brigitta. "How do you do it, Mother?" she asked.

Brigitta held out a hand, beckoning Elsa to her side. "I smile," she said, dropping a kiss onto Elsa's braided hair, "and remember that when times are hard, all we can do is try." After embracing Elsa once more, she held her daughter at arm's length. "And it's time for you to try again."

"Are you sure?" Elsa swallowed at her mother's firm nod. "Well, all right."

Glancing up, she found the first glass of water on a high shelf, and pointed her finger at it, freezing it solid. _One. _Her eyes tracked sideways to find the second hidden in an alcove above her bed. _Two. _The third peeped out from behind the same mirror which had almost sent her own magic back into her face a few moments before. _Three…_

As she turned in place, Elsa's world narrowed to the simple need to find her targets and hit them solidly, harming nothing else in the process. It wasn't until she'd successfully accounted for nine of them that she looked towards her mother again.

Her eyes widened as she saw the tenth glass of water, balanced on Brigitta's palm.

Gathering her courage, she met her mother's eyes and set a finger on the very surface of the water, calling up the most delicate spike of magic she had ever attempted.

The liquid contents of the glass crystalized neatly from the top to the bottom in an instant, leaving the glass itself unbroken.

"Ten," said Brigitta, setting down the glass of ice and showing Elsa her unmarked palm. "And not a speck of harm done by any of them." She smiled as Elsa stared at her own hands, hope and excitement surging up in her chest. "Depending on what your father says, you and your sister may be having a little talk very soon…"

* * *

"This puzzle will help you keep your focus, even when your mind wants to be scattered," Gunther told Elsa, laying out the seven variously-shaped tiles on the surface of his desk. "We will start with some easy shapes, and move on to the more difficult ones, but remember, sometimes you may have to think creatively." He smiled. "An important skill for any king or queen to learn. Now, let us begin. Assemble these into a large square for me…"

Elsa mastered the first few challenges easily, but as the figures her father traced out on his slate became more and more complicated, she started muttering to herself, tugging at the end of her braid, and sketching in frost on the desktop to try out her ideas.

"And what she is not doing," Brigitta noted quietly to her husband, as they watched their daughter from the other end of the room, "is making things explode, freeze solid, or grow terrifyingly large icicles. Which is what she _used _to do when she became frustrated."

"Go on, say it." Gunther sighed. "I know you, and you will never be happy until you say it."

Brigitta smiled and kissed his cheek. "I told you so." The words emerged with a little chuckle threading through them. "Do you think she is ready yet?"

"Very soon." Gunther nodded as Elsa flipped one of the tiles over, exhaling sharply in triumph. "When she can work on these puzzles, and others like them, for three days in a row without any unfortunate incidents, then yes, I think we can say she is ready for her first steps back…"

* * *

"Anna?" Elsa poked her head around her sister's bedroom door, and smiled to see the eager expression on Anna's face as she jumped to her feet. "Do you have a minute?"

"Of course!" Anna bounced into the hallway, hugging Elsa tight as soon as she passed through the door. The height difference between them now that they were six and nine years old, Elsa realized with some surprise, was less than it had been when they were four and seven. "Are you feeling better? I know you weren't very well last week, you had to go back to your room all of a sudden to lie down…"

"Well, that's some of what I have to talk to you about." Elsa sighed. "Anna, come with me," she said, setting off down the hallway, Anna keeping pace beside her. "I'll show you a secret I have kept inside…" Anna looked appropriately intrigued by the mention of a secret, and Elsa swallowed her smile as she went on. "It's why I sometimes don't have much to say. Why just the other day I ran away to hide." She glanced over at her sister. "Did that hurt you?"

Anna shrugged. "Some," she said guardedly.

"I'm sorry." Elsa slid her hand into Anna's and squeezed it gently as they turned into the throne room. "But you'll understand when I show my gift to you…"

"Gift?" Anna frowned. "Elsa, what gift?"

Elsa cupped her hands in front of her. "Watch," she said, and concentrated, as she'd learned to do when she was contemplating her puzzle pieces and the larger shape she needed to fit them inside. The magic leaped to answer, sparkling in her palm, swirling around her fingers, until with a toss she flung it free, to fill the room with mounds of snow and bring more sprinkling down from the rafters. Anna's hands flew up to her mouth as she stared first one way, then another, her eyes filled with wonder and amazement.

"Do you want to build a snowman?" Elsa asked, grinning at Anna.

Anna twirled in three circles under the falling snow, then flung her hands out wide, tipping her head back. "Yes," she caroled, "I do!"

Laughing, the sisters ran into each other's arms.

* * *

(A/N: You'll have to imagine the big, triumphant musical ending here. And yes, certain parts of this dialogue are indeed written so that they can go to a particular melody from _Frozen_. What did you expect?

It looks like this is going to be another story of short, plentiful chapters. I'm sure you're all horribly disappointed.

Next time: we find out where Elsa's powers came from in the first place!)


	3. The Snow Maiden

"Where did your powers come from, Elsa?" Anna asked her sister much later that day, tamping her hand down on a pile of snow to make tiny prints, like miniature snow angels. "How did you get them?"

"The grandfather troll asked Papa that same thing, when we visited them to keep you from freezing." Elsa shut her eyes to remember. "'Born with the powers, or cursed?' he said."

"Cursed?" Anna's eyes widened in shock. "How could your magic be a curse? It's so beautiful!"

"What if it got away from me, Anna?" Elsa asked quietly. "What if I had another accident like I did with you, but bigger? What if I were so frightened, or angry, or sad, that I couldn't make it stop when I needed to? I could bring winter into summer, and kill all our farmers' crops so that they'd starve when the food ran out, and freeze over the fjord so no ships could come or go and the traders would be bankrupt. And I'd have no way to stop it."

"But you're not like that." Anna reached out and took her sister's hand. "You're not frightened or angry, are you? Or sad?"

"No." Elsa smiled at her sister. "No, I'm not. I was, for a little while, after the accident, but now I'm not anymore. Not so long as I have you."

"I'll never go away from you." Anna added her other hand to the clasp. "Not ever, ever, ever. Not even when I'm all grown up and so are you. I promise."

"Oh, Anna." Touched, Elsa squeezed the smaller hands gently. "Thank you, but don't make promises you can't keep. What if you meet a prince from another kingdom, and fall in love with him? You'd have to go away with him to be his queen."

"So I won't fall in love with a prince." Anna waved this difficulty away airily. "Or if I do, he'll be a younger prince, and then he can come and live in Arendelle. But that's _forever_ away from now, and I still want to know where your powers came from. Didn't you ever wonder?"

"Well. Sometimes." Elsa lay back in a pile of snow and exhaled slowly, watching her breath crystallize into perfect six-sided snowflakes. "It would be nice to know it didn't come from a curse on somebody else. On Papa or Mama, maybe, or another ancestor of ours."

"It didn't," said a voice from the doorway, startling both girls into squeaks.

"Mama!" Anna sprang up to dash to the Queen and hug her tightly. "Mama, why didn't you ever _tell_ me?"

"Because the grandfather troll said it might be dangerous for you to remember that Elsa had magic, until she was far more sure of her control." Queen Brigitta bent and kissed her younger daughter on the white streak of hair which ornamented one side of Anna's head. "But now she is, so now you know. And I believe I may know where your powers came from, Elsa," she added to her older daughter, who sat up in a rush, dislodging a small flurry of snow around herself. "Clean this up, please?"

"Yes, Mama." Elsa got to her feet and raised her arms above her head, then drew them down slowly. As she did, the ice on the pillars and the piles of snow around her grew smaller and smaller, until by the time her hands were cupped in front of her, the only frost in the room ornamented a whirling sphere floating above her fingers. With a quick puff of breath, she disintegrated this, and looked up with a smile.

"Wow," whispered Anna, her eyes shining. "That's so amazing!"

Hand in hand, the sisters followed their mother from the throne room and down a long hallway lined with portraits, stopping at the fourth from the door.

"This, girls," said Brigitta, raising the sheer veil which hung before the picture to preserve it from dust and sunlight, "is your great-great-grandfather, King Anders, and his Queen, your twice-great-grandmother Inga. What do you see?"

"She looks—" Elsa began, raising her hand towards the woman on the canvas.

"She looks like you, Elsa!" Anna broke in impulsively. "All white and pale, like snow and ice, but so pretty in her blue gown with all the sparkles! You should have one like that, when you're grown up and Queen of Arendelle."

"Maybe I will, and you'll have one to match it." Elsa tugged on her sister's unstreaked braid. "Only yours would have to be red, because you're fast and bouncy like fire!"

"Hey!" Anna twisted away from the pulling fingers, then draped the braid over her shoulder to regard it thoughtfully. "I can't wear red," she said after a moment of consideration. "It wouldn't look right with my hair. But maybe gold? That's a fire color too."

"Maybe." Elsa looked up at the portrait again, searching the painted face of Queen Inga as though seeking some secret that lady had held in her heart. "She looks…not sad or scared, but something like both of those," she said finally. "Was she cursed, Mama? Is that why I have my powers?"

"No, love." Brigitta sat down on one of the sofas which lined the walls of the corridor, patting the cushions beside her until both her daughters came to sit with her. "Queen Inga came from a little village of ice-cutters here in Arendelle, near the valley where the trolls live, and she was not cursed with ice and snow. Instead she was born from them. She was what is called a Snow Maiden."

"Does that mean she was a Snow Queen, when she married the King?" Anna broke in. "Like Elsa will be?"

"Not exactly." Brigitta shook her head. "Here is how it was. One of the ice-cutters and his wife were beginning to grow old, and they loved children very much but had none of their own. So they visited the trolls to ask if anything could be done for them. And the eldest troll, knowing that these were good people who had always been kind to their neighbors, took ice and snow in his hands and shaped them into the form of a baby, and breathed magic over them."

"And then?" asked Elsa breathlessly, her fingers twisted together in her lap. "What happened?"

"And then what the troll held in his hands was not a shape of snow, but a real, live, lovely little girl." Brigitta smiled at Elsa's long breath of awe and Anna's gleeful, hand-muffled squeal. "And he gave the child to the ice-cutter and his wife, but warned them never to let her get too close to a fire, whether that was with cooking or with dancing on feast days or any other time. For she looked and lived like any other girl, did Inga the Snow Maiden, just as long as she never touched so much as a candle flame. If she ever had, she would have melted away in an instant."

"But she didn't," said Anna with certainty. "She grew up and got beautiful, and the Prince fell in love with her and married her!"

"The Prince fell in love with her, yes," Brigitta agreed. "But he wanted her to come to know him as a man and not only as a Prince, so that he could be sure she wanted _him_, and not just his crown and his palace. So he came to her village disguised as an ordinary young man, and stayed there for a year, working in leather, because his hobby was making beautiful shoes and pouches for his friends, and his tools worked just as well to mend the boots and belts of the ice-cutters. And in the end he won Inga's heart and married her, and brought her home as his Queen. And yes, Anna, the people did call her the Snow Queen, because of how pale she was, but only her husband and her children ever knew the truth of her being a Snow Maiden."

"So I have power _with_ snow, because our great-great-grandmother was _made_ from snow?" Elsa stretched out her hands, looking at their fronts, then their backs. "I suppose that makes sense."

"But are there really people who're cursed with powers, or with something else?" Anna clambered up onto the back of the sofa. "Who does the cursing? Could _I_ get cursed with powers? Maybe I could be an Ice Princess to go along with Elsa's Snow Queen—eek!" She shrieked aloud as Elsa, with a wicked grin, ran a line of ice along the inside seam of her gown. "No fair!"

"Behave," said Brigitta firmly, plucking her younger daughter off her precarious perch. "Both of you. As for being cursed…I don't know. I assume it must happen, if the grandfather troll needed to ask about it, but I couldn't tell you how or where or why. But I believe I know who would." She smiled. "Why don't we go and talk to your father about making another trip to the trolls' valley?"

"Yay!" Anna wiggled off her mother's lap to do a dance of victory across the hall and back. "We're going on a trip!"

"What about the gates?" Elsa asked her mother quietly under the sound of Anna's celebration. "Will Father have them opened again?"

"When we come home from our journey, yes, I think he will." Brigitta took Elsa's hand in hers. "Your father's council has done a fine job of keeping things running while we were otherwise occupied, but I believe it is time for Arendelle to be ruled directly by her King and Queen again." She smiled. "And, of course, to meet her princesses. Who will behave themselves with dignity and restraint at all times while they are in the public eye, _Anna_."

"What?" Anna spun around, slipped on the tile floor, and fell flat on her bottom. "Ow!"

Elsa had to use both hands to hold in her giggles.

* * *

(A/N: And I'm back!

Yes, sadly, hiatuses of this length are more common with me than I'd like them to be, but I've got a couple chapters ready, or almost so, and I'm going to try to keep moving on this story from now on. My apologies, O readers, and if you want to keep up with what I'm doing, I have a Facebook page (facebook dot com slash annebwalsh dot page) and a website (annebwalsh dot com) where you can find out more about my life, my writing, and other random things. Usually dogs, cats, music, and food, or some combination thereof.)


	4. Of Parents and Children

"You asked Papa if I was born with my powers, or cursed," Elsa said to the eldest troll, as Queen Brigitta worked at her embroidery nearby, keeping a watchful eye on Anna in her romp with several troll children, a very blond human boy, and a half-grown reindeer. "So curses are real, then?"

"Oh, yes. Curses are very real." The troll, whose name Elsa had learned was Pabbie, scowled into the distance before returning his stony gaze to her. "Tell me this, Elsa. Are most humans good, or evil?"

"Good." Elsa frowned. "Why?"

"Because." Pabbie gestured around him, at the round rocks which Elsa knew were slumbering trolls, at the little trolls currently being piled onto a giggling Anna by the boy and the reindeer. "Most trolls are also good. But like humans, a few are evil. And like humans, good trolls live together and help one another with their power, and evil trolls keep to themselves and hoard what they have, never helping anyone. So their magic grows, and grows, until they can do almost anything they please. And when someone crosses them…"

Elsa shivered, as the stories she and Anna loved to read together loomed large inside her mind. Boys turned into wild animals or kidnapped away to impossible castles, girls wandering the world dressed in many-furred cloaks or gowns made out of wood, were far less romantic when they became true possibilities rather than words and pictures on a page.

"Our Kristoff lost his parents and an older brother to the curse of an evil troll," Pabbie went on, gesturing towards the boy, who was now being sat upon by the reindeer so that Anna could return the favor by rolling the little trolls into a pile on top of him. "His father's sled, loaded with ice, flipped over one night in the woods, and a piece of ice slid free and struck the troll in the leg. An accident, of course, but the troll was furious, and followed the man home to demand recompense. But how many ice-cutters have gold or silver or precious stones lying about?"

"They wouldn't." Elsa got up to pace the stone-covered clearing, guiltily pulling in the bits of her power that were lining her footsteps with frost at her mother's soft cough and pointed look towards them. "So the troll cursed them, all of them except Kristoff. Which makes sense. If he was the youngest, they would want to protect him if they could. What kind of curse was it?"

"We do not know." Pabbie raised his hand into the air, creating amorphous red figures which swirled about the shape of a small boy. "Kristoff remembers nothing except awakening in the reindeer barn beside his friend Sven. His home had been destroyed, and of his parents and brother there was no trace."

With a little sniffle, Elsa burrowed into her mother's embrace. Brigitta set her needlework aside to hold her daughter close, stroking the pale hair and murmuring words of calm to her. "How did he come to you?" she asked Pabbie over Elsa's head. "I would have thought one of the other families in his village would take him in."

"To begin with, they did, but some of them were afraid that the curse might follow him. So the women watched after him less as time went by, letting him do whatever he pleased. Which happened to be following the ice-cutters out to their work, with Sven hitched up to the little sled Kristoff's father had made for them. And one day, coming back from ice-cutting, he saw something astonishing. Two horses, each carrying a grown person and a child, and behind one of the horses there lay a trail of ice." Pabbie nodded at Elsa's gasp of recognition. "Yes, Elsa, it was your family Kristoff followed. And when we saw him wandering in the woods with only a reindeer for company, we knew he would be safer with us. So here he has been ever since."

"I'm glad he found you." Elsa turned in her mother's arms to watch Kristoff, who had formed a defensive alliance with Anna and Sven against the tickle attacks of the besieging troll children. "He looks like a nice boy, and he deserves better than being all alone."

"What will become of him when he is grown?" Brigitta asked curiously. "We could always help him to find a place, if need be."

"The offer is appreciated, Your Majesty, but unnecessary." Pabbie bowed slightly in thanks. "Kristoff intends to follow his father's trade, and we will make sure he has the means to get what he needs for that work. Of course, if you wished to hire him to supply ice to the palace, once he is competent enough to merit such a post…"

"We will certainly think about it." Brigitta glanced back at Anna, who was expertly poking trolls away from her two- and four-legged allies with a long stick, then down at Elsa, who seemed torn between joining in the fun and staying to listen to the conversation. "Why don't you go and see if they would like a bit of snow for their game?" she suggested, kissing Elsa on the forehead, then releasing her. "You can practice keeping it within limits. Only as far as the trolls tell you is their play area, no further."

"Yes, Mama." Elsa returned the kiss, curtseyed politely to Pabbie, and picked up her skirts in both hands, the better to run towards her sister and her playmates.

"You worry about her," said Pabbie, following Elsa with his eyes. "Although she has her powers far better under her control now than once she did, still you worry."

"Would I be a mother if I did not worry?" Brigitta sighed, watching her older daughter raise her hands to summon one of her tiny, localized snowstorms. "She will not always be able to maintain this level of control, especially if she is ambushed by the unexpected. Which is one reason why I will be happy to speak with my husband about having your Kristoff come regularly to the palace once he is grown, and our bringing the girls here as often as possible before then. If he becomes firmly established in their minds as their friend, and they in his, then it is far more likely that he will tell them those things which a seller of ice may learn in his travels that it would be well for two princesses, or a princess and a queen, to know."

"Already looking that far into the future, I see." Pabbie narrowed his eyes at Brigitta. "Is there a reason?"

"Not a particular one." Brigitta folded her hands in her lap. "But Elsa _will_ be queen someday, so it would be foolish not to plan for it. And a queen, be she never so beloved by her people, needs someone to tell her what those people are saying. To be sure their hearts are still with her, and have not been frozen into indifference or even poisoned by hate."

"Indeed. And a queen who has a power which may startle or frighten her people will need that all the more." Pabbie nodded his stony head. "I am sure your husband has his sources for such information."

"He does, and many of them. Including a few he is visiting even as we speak, in the guise of 'Gunther the Hunter'." Brigitta smiled, thinking of the commoner's persona her husband had long since established, and her own matching one as the skillful keeper of the hunter's simple home. "Once he is finished, he will come back to meet us here, and we plan to take the girls away for a few days of simply being ourselves before we return home for the grand celebration of reopening the gates."

"And Elsa's powers?" Pabbie gestured to the newly-constructed ice palace across the clearing, atop which the elder princess of Arendelle stood, trying to maintain a harsh and lofty demeanor as befit a Snow Queen, though this was somewhat spoiled by her incipient fit of giggles as the troll children, Anna, and Kristoff danced around the castle making faces at her. "Will you tell your people they exist?"

"I think…not yet." Brigitta sighed. "It may be unwise to hide such a thing, but it might also be unwise to expose it. No one denies that magic exists, but at the same time people are wary of those who work magic, and for good reason. In the wrong hands, or used wrongly, magic can cause terrible trouble. Even my own sister and her husband…" Her voice failed her momentarily as she gazed at her daughters, beautiful, living, safe. "The magic they sought out saved my sister's life, but it also lost them their child while she was still an infant," she said when she could speak again. "They have never stopped hoping that someday she will be found, but I cannot imagine how they bear it, day after day, year after year."

"Has the sorrow driven them apart?" At Brigitta's shaken head, Pabbie held up a finger. "Then that may be how. With love, all things are possible. Though a bit of good hard work never hurts," he added, as Elsa extended her hands over the front gates of her palace and spread a soft sheet of snow across the ground.

"Here is my challenge to you," the young Snow Queen announced in ringing tones, creating seven flat pieces of ice in sizes and shapes familiar to Brigitta's eye. She had often seen Gunther work on similar puzzles, both to keep himself calm in troubled times and to sharpen his mind for further thought on a complicated subject. "Fit these shapes into the three outlines I will give you, with nothing overlapping and nothing left behind, and the doors of my palace will open!"

Anna and Kristoff sat down at the edge of the snowfield, using the reclining Sven as a backrest and gazing intently at the first outline Elsa had drawn in the snow. Two of the troll children, whose stony hands were less subject to the cold, moved the icy shapes as directed by the humans or their fellows, while Elsa leaned against the parapet of her castle to watch.

With a small smile, Brigitta picked up her needlework again. Life might not always be so peaceful as it was at this moment, but for today, this was enough.

* * *

(A/N: As you can see, I'm going with the fanon that the royal families depicted in _Frozen_ and _Tangled_ are related. We may even get a bit longer of a cameo from Rapunzel and Eugene at Elsa's coronation than we were granted in the movie. To everyone who asked if Kristoff and Sven would come into this story, yes, here they are, and they'll absolutely be around more in chapters to come. As for Hans and Olaf…patience, grasshoppers. These things take time.

One entirely new character will be introduced next chapter, though if you follow my blog (Anne's Randomness, housed at annebwalsh dot com) you may already know about that. We'll also be touching on one of my favorite little motifs, that being, it's fine and dandy to be a princess, but not to be a _helpless_ princess. Which no, Anna and Elsa never were, but let's continue that excellent progress in the right direction, shall we?

I am going to do my best not to let this story languish for any more multi-month periods, but as anyone who's followed my writing for a while knows, I can't make promises. I do have a pretty good idea where it's going, though, so here's hoping I can pull it off! Thanks, as always, for reading, and I'll see you next time!)


	5. The Hunting Lodge

(A/N: Um. Surprise? And as ever, I own nothing you recognize from anywhere other than right here, whether that's characters, words, settings, what have you.)

* * *

"Here is one of the most important things you will ever learn about being royal," said King Gunther to his daughters as they approached the door of a very well-built, but otherwise quite ordinary-looking, hunting lodge. "There must be times and places when you are not. Otherwise _what_ you are will consume _who_ you are. Thus, your mother and I have this place." He gestured to the door of the lodge. "Here, we are not the King and Queen of Arendelle. We are simply Gunther and Brigitta, a hunter of wild beasts and his wife who holds the household. Which means that while you are here, you are not the Princesses Elsa and Anna, but simply Elsa and Anna the hunter's daughters."

Anna squeezed her hands together in excitement, but Elsa looked dubious. "What do Elsa and Anna the hunter's daughters _do_?" she asked.

"From their father, they will learn how to track the animals he hunts," said Brigitta, herding her daughters in through the door Gunther was now holding open. "How to tell which animals are allowable to hunt and which are not, and how to conduct a hunt properly, so that the quarry does not suffer. And from their mother…" She smiled as she flung back the curtains over one of the windows. "They will learn how to make food, how to mend and tend clothing, and how to keep a home clean and welcoming. For hunters' daughters have no servants, and even princesses who do have servants should know how to care for their own belongings."

"And both hunters' daughters and princesses may go on adventures someday," Gunther added, shutting the door and going to the fireplace, where he knelt down and began to build a nest of tinder. "Everyone must fend for themselves on an adventure."

"I want to go on an adventure, Mama!" Anna bounded up the room and back again as her mother and Elsa pulled open more sets of curtains, letting the soft afternoon sunlight into the room. "I want an adventure like Gerda had in the story, where she rode on a reindeer and found the flowers and met the robbers and the crows and the women who did magic!"

"Did somebody say magic?" Grinning, Elsa conjured a snowball into her palm. Anna squealed and ducked.

"Elsa, not in the house," Brigitta said firmly. Elsa made a face but twisted her hand in a circle, sending the snowball back into the nothingness from which it had come. "Thank you. Once we have the beds made up, dinner started, and the table set, then you girls may go outside and play for a little while. But stay in sight, do you understand me?"

"Yes, Mama," came back to her in a resigned two-part chorus.

"Good." Brigitta smiled as a curl of smoke rose from the tinder onto which her husband was gently blowing. "We will work in the bedrooms until your father has the fire started both here and in the kitchen, and then we will see what is in the pantry so that we can decide what to cook for dinner."

* * *

Anna stuck her nose into the chest her mother opened, then sneezed three times in rapid succession. "That's strong!" she complained, backing away. "What is it?"

Elsa took a more circumspect sniff. "Fleabane?" she said, then reached forward and picked up a small sprig of a woody-stemmed herb with pointed leaves. "And rosemary. To keep the linens fresh, and keep bugs out of them."

"Very good." Brigitta lifted out the first set of sheets and set them on one of the beds, reaching back in for a second set. "But as Anna has discovered, they can smell a bit strong when they first come out of storage. So we will hang them outside on the clothesline, to let the sun and the fresh air work on them."

"What clothesline?" Anna peered out the window. "I don't see a clothesline."

"Not yet." Brigitta removed a small coil of thin rope from the chest as well. "We still need to put it up."

"Put it up where?" Elsa came to the bedside and accepted one set of sheets into her arms, Anna bounding over to take the other. "In between two trees? Won't that put the sheets in the shade for part of the day? I thought they needed to be in the sun."

"They do." Brigitta led the way to the door. "Which is why it would be very kind of you to oblige me by building two posts which will last most of the afternoon."

Elsa sighed, and bundled her sheets into Anna's arms. "Here, hold these," she said, and pointed her finger at a spot in the dooryard of the lodge. A moment later, a tall post of ice shimmered there. "Like that, Mama?" she asked, relaxing her concentration.

"Yes, exactly." Brigitta chuckled. "And now, to measure how far away the other post should be…"

A few moments later, Anna giggled helplessly as she ran with all her speed around her mother, careful not to rip the sheet she was holding. She had started at Elsa's ice post, and Brigitta had backed up until the sheet was fully unfolded, to get the length of one of the sheets they would use on their beds. Now they had to extend that length three more times, and the quickest way to do that was for princess and queen—or rather, hunter's daughter and hunter's wife—to pivot around one another, first Anna, then Brigitta, then Anna again. Elsa, standing by with the other sheets in her arms, was stifling her own giggles by biting down on the end of her braid.

"Here!" Anna shouted triumphantly, stamping her foot on the spot as she stopped for the second time. "Elsa, put it here!"

Draping the sheets over one arm, Elsa pointed carefully to Anna's left, sprouting a second post of ice identical to the first.

"Excellent," said Brigitta, motioning Anna closer and folding the sheet up into her younger daughter's arms as Anna danced towards her. "Now, I will put up the clothesline, and we will hang out the sheets, and then you girls will learn how to dust and sweep out a bedroom…"

* * *

That night, after a meal of flatbread with berry jam and stewed dried meat, the family sat around the fire in the main room of the lodge. Elsa and Gunther played with their puzzle shapes on the floor, each of them taking a turn to arrange them into an outline and challenge the other to guess what it had been meant to look like. Anna cuddled against her mother, her eyes drifting shut, as Brigitta brushed her hair and sang softly to her.

"There," said Elsa, positioning the pieces. "An easy one."

"Hmm." Gunther frowned, looking over the arrangement. "A number?"

"No." Elsa shook her head. "A letter. There aren't any numbers that look like that, Papa!"

"Are you sure?" Gunther crooked his finger. "Come and look at it from my side, my little Snow Queen."

Elsa sniffed once, but got up and circled to stand behind her father. Once there, she frowned, staring down at the pieces. "It does look like a number," she said slowly. "But I meant it to be a letter…"

"And if I were looking at it from your side, it would be." Gunther laid one hand atop the pieces and gestured underneath them with two fingers of the other hand. "Ice, please."

Elsa waved her own hand, and a small sheet of ice appeared under the puzzle shapes, allowing Gunther to rotate them cleanly through half a circle. "Here, you see?" he said, taking his hand away. "This is what you made, isn't it?"

"Yes." Elsa nodded. "That's my letter. But from over here, before you moved it, it did look like a number."

"Which means you could have argued all night long, one saying it was one thing, one another," Brigitta put in, her fingers braiding up Anna's hair. "And both of you would have been right, and both of you would also have been wrong."

"And a king," said Elsa slowly, "or a queen, can't ever see just their own side of things. They have to think of how everyone else will see it too."

"Very good." Gunther reached up and ruffled Elsa's hair, and her cheeks flushed with pleasure. "A great many people much older than you never learn that lesson. You can use that to your advantage, and Arendelle's, by learning how to show people only what they want to see. That will keep their attention off what you don't want them to see."

"But isn't that cheating?" Elsa evaporated the ice under the puzzle shapes with a swirl of her fingers, frowning once more. "I don't want to cheat. It's wrong."

"Yes, it is." Brigitta sighed, tying off one of Anna's braids. "But it may also sometimes be the only way to keep your land and your people safe."

"In general, you can deal honestly with the honest," said Gunther, drawing Elsa gently down by his side and cupping her hands in his. "And most of Arendelle's neighbors and trading partners are honest. But if you also learn how dishonest deals look, how they can be made to seem honest, and all the tricks and traps that can lurk inside them, then you can unmask dishonesty when you meet it, even if you never use those skills for yourself. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Papa." Elsa laid her head against his shoulder. "How come Anna couldn't have been born first?" she complained halfheartedly. "I don't want to be queen."

"Do you think Anna would make a good queen?" Brigitta asked.

"No." Elsa craned her neck to look at her mother. "Not without having to do a lot of things that would make her very unhappy."

"So, that is why." Brigitta tied off the other braid, then lifted her sleeping daughter in her arms. "Or enough of why for tonight. Come along, Elsa. Bed."

"Yes, Mama." Elsa covered a yawn as she got to her feet. "Will we go back to the palace tomorrow?"

"No, we have a few days to spend up here on the mountain." Brigitta and Gunther exchanged smiles. "We may even sleep outside in a tent one night, all huddled up together to stay warm. Like a family of bears."

"Rrrr-arrrr," Anna growled in her sleep, moving her arm like a bear's paw.

Elsa's second yawn was hijacked by giggles.

* * *

The mountain lay silent under its blanket of snow, ever-shifting lights tracing colorful paths through the sky. Snow drifted, swirled into patterns, then parted to reveal Elsa's small figure. Waving an imperious hand, she wafted the snowflakes about herself in imitation of the patterns glowing above her.

"The snow glows white on the mountain tonight, not a footprint to be seen," she whispered, spinning in place and whipping a funnel into being. "A kingdom of ice-olation…" She giggled at her own pun. "And it looks like I'm the queen!" Stopping short, she flung her hands above her head, sending pinwheels of snow spiraling high into the air.

"Impressive," said a voice from behind her.

Elsa squeaked in shock and spun to face the interloper, a handful of icicles sprouting in her right palm, ready to throw.

"Hey, watch it!" protested the speaker, dodging to one side. "You could put somebody's eye out with those things!"

"You're…" Elsa blinked to clear her eyes and looked again. "You're a talking bear!"

"Yeah, so?" The half-grown white bear sat up, shaking snow out of his fur. "You're a girl shooting ice out of her hands."

"Touche." Elsa allowed the icicles to shrink back into her palm. "How did you learn to talk?"

"How did you learn your powers?" the bear countered, nodding to her hands.

Elsa shrugged. "I can't really remember a time when I couldn't handle snow and ice."

"And I can't remember a time when I couldn't talk. So, we're even." The bear huffed his breath upwards, clearing an errant bit of fur off his nose. "I liked the way you were making the snow dance with you. It looked almost like the wind during a strong storm, only it wasn't."

"Thanks." Swallowing her fear, the Princess held out one small hand. "I'm Elsa."

"Berni." A great, broad paw lifted to press gently against her palm. "Nice to meet you, Elsa. Or should I say Your Majesty, if you're the queen of the mountain?"

"I'm not really a queen." Elsa felt her cheeks warm slightly with a blush. "Not for a long time yet, I hope."

"Yet?" Berni drew back a little. "Are you—I beg your pardon, Your Highness. I shouldn't have intruded on you."

"You aren't intruding on me." Elsa shook her head. "I'm the one on your mountain, aren't I? If anything, I should apologize for intruding on you. But I'd like it better if we didn't bother with apologies." She tried a smile, and saw an answering wrinkle through Berni's furred face. "If we could maybe just be friends."

"I think maybe we can." Berni nodded once. "Friends, then." He snickered once, the sound decidedly strange from something so large. "And we'll be even better friends if you happen to know where I could find some fish."

Elsa glanced back towards the camp where her parents and Anna slept, and the remains of the salmon dinner her mother had cooked over the campfire. "I might be able to get you some fish," she said with a small grin. "If you'll let me ride on your back."

"Deal." Berni crouched to allow Elsa to clamber onto his broad shoulders. "Your Highness."

In a swirl of snow, bear and princess were gone.

* * *

(A/N: Okay, so I just need to stop talking about how long it's going to take me to update next. Every time I do, I jinx myself…

Greetings, O readers, and apologies. A great many emotional issues later, here I am once more. As mentioned just above, I will not be making any comments about length of time until next update. I will, however, state the following:

I have just won National Novel Writing Month for the tenth year in a row. The story thus created, _The Black Archer_, may or may not become an actual readable novel. We shall see.

I have also recently finished a holiday collection of stories for the fourth year in a row. _Masters in This Hall_, set to be released tomorrow, December 1, 2015, joins 2014's _Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day_, 2013's _In the Bleak Midwinter_, and 2012's _Sing We Now of Christmas_ (theme titles? Me?) in being available on Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, the Apple Store, Kobo, and other fine e-book retailers, as well as paperback copies available through both Amazon and my Etsy shop. You can find it by searching for the title and my name, Anne B. Walsh, at your favorite e-book store, or by following one of the useful links at annebwalsh dot com slash useful hyphen links (handy, no?).

And finally, just this week I pulled together my Fiction Friday and Made-Up Monday flash fictions from 2015, originally published on my blog, Anne's Randomness (annebwalsh dot com slash blog), in a handy collected form for the second year in a row. _Week in Review 2_ can be found in all the same places as _Masters in This Hall_. End of shameless plugs.

Thanks, as always, for reading.)


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